Aaron Winter

“Why would you ever say anything that’s not awesome?”

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This past summer, I wrote an email about how I was struggling to get through the Dig.This.Zoom course, in spite of having paid $1,200 for it.

Maybe it will turn out the course wasn’t an entire waste of money, because it did provide me with the following quick story:

In one Dig.This.Zoom lesson, Aaron Winter, former copy chief at Motley Fool and guru to super successful Dig copywriters like Dan Ferrari and Austin Lee, was talking about headlines.

​​”So there’s headlines,” Aaron said, “and then there’s… stuff? Content? We reject that. Ideally, they’re all headlines. Why would you ever say something that’s not awesome?”

In slightly clearer words, Aaron was saying that each line of your copy should have as much pull — as much emotional weight and curiosity and benefit, all fused together — as your headline has.

This is the kind of inspirational but vague mysticism that made me start to tune out the entire Dig.This.Zoom course.

Fortunately, Austin Lee, who was on this particular Dig.This.Zoom call, chimed in at this point with some practical advice:

“One of the most fun and educational exercises you encouraged me to do was write a headline for every little section of my outline. I really wrote an entire promo of maybe 26 or 32 headlines all the way down through the offer.”

I bring this up (spoiler alert) because I am promoting my Copy Riddles program. Whenever I do promote this program, I always get some form of the following question:

Is Copy Riddles just about bullets OR about about copywriting in general?

The answer is yes.

As Aaron says above, copywriting is really about your best headlines. And your best headlines are really just your best bullets. Or as Ben Settle put it once:

“Bullets still work, never stopped working, and will always work — When written correct everything ‘comes’ from the bullets, including non-bullet copy or ads where there are no bullets.”

Copy Riddles is now open and ready to turn you into somebody who writes stuff that’s awesome. Whether that’s awesome bullets, awesome headlines, or awesome body copy.

​​In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

An inspiring Aaron Winter recommendation

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If you are a bit of a word nerd, then I have something that might fascinate you:

The words free and friend are closely related, and both derive from an ancient root meaning love.

Maybe the path from love to friend seems straightforward.

But free? What’s love got to do with it?

Well, here’s the surprising explanation:

Apparently, the original meaning of free was “not a slave”. A free person was able engage in social relationships such as friendship and marriage. On the other hand, slavery was a condition in which all social bonds were cut off, and the only relation was being owned by the master.

Perhaps that sounds abstract. An example might help:

If a Roman legionnaire was captured in war, made into a slave, and then escaped and made it back home, he would have to go through laborious rituals to recreate his entire social network, including remarrying his wife. That’s because becoming a slave was equivalent to “social death” and the severing of all social ties.

That thing with the Roman wife and the free/friend etymology are two curious factoids I got from the book The Dawn of Everything.

This book takes a bunch of new anthropology and archeology research that has come out over the past few decades, and it turns upside-down what you might think of as well-established human history.

I’m telling you about all this because yesterday, I promised to tell you the most valuable thing I have gotten (so far) from the Dig.This.Zoom training.

Well, the recommendation to read The Dawn of Everything is it.

Partly, that’s because The Dawn of Everything is full of interesting tidbits like the free/friend etymology above.

But really, I found this book valuable because of how inspiring it is. Because through detailed argument and seemingly endless research, it makes the following point:

Human beings choose and shape the societies live in. There’s nothing inevitable about the way the world is, or about the way it’s going to develop.

Aaron Winter, the copywriter who is putting on the Dig.This.Zoom training, recommended this book to suggest that something similar holds on a smaller scale as well.

Aaron’s point was that you can choose and shape how you work, and with who you work. There’s nothing inevitable and you are not bound by industry norms, not if you don’t want to be.

Again, I found this inspiring. I always enjoy being reminded that we all have agency, and that we can choose and shape how our lives turn out, even though it might not be obvious in any given moment.

I’m not sure I’ve done enough to either motivate you or convince you with this email.

But perhaps you resonate on some level with the idea that today’s society is not the only possible one, and that very real paths exist to something better.

Or perhaps you are greedy for lots of interesting facts and arguments that will make you a more interesting person to your friends, acquaintances, or newsletter readers.

In either of these cases, you might get some value, or perhaps a lot, out of The Dawn of Everything. Here’s the link if you want to check it out:

https://bejakovic.com/dawn

About that Dig.This.Zoom course

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Today is Tuesday, which means it’s time for the next Dig.This.Zoom call.

I’ve written about this course a few weeks ago.

​​I paid $1,200 to listen to mysterious, reclusive, but highly successful copywriter Aaron Winter talk over 12 consecutive Tuesdays. Well, I paid to listen to Aaron and also to participate in the “nebulous community benefits” promised.

But the fact is, I’m finding myself falling behind with this course. I’m even dreading tonight’s call a little.

One reason is the time difference. Where I am, it will be 10:30pm by the time tonight’s call starts. That’s a time of day when I’m really only suited for a warm glass of milk and a bedtime story, if there would be anyone out there kind enough to read me one.

The other reason is that, from what I’ve seen of these calls so far, they are very loosely structured, very jokey (and I’m quite humorless, at least at 10:30pm), and each week’s content seems to mainly be one or two big metaphors.

I’m telling you all this because several people have written to ask me what I think about the Dig calls, and whether the course is worth getting now that the price has been slashed to $600 — if you don’t get the calls live and if you don’t get to participate in those “nebulous community benefits.”

I can tell you this:

Aaron is apparently setting up an affiliate program, so all the folks who signed up initially can promote these new $600 recordings.

I thought about it for about 2 secs. And then I decided I won’t be selling these Dig calls as an affiliate.

After all, if I am struggling to get value out of this thing myself, how can I congruently sell it to you? And you know what they say about daily email newsletters. It only takes one sip of spoiled milk to turn you off the stuff for years.

Perhaps at this point, you are getting ready to take a big sigh of relief. Perhaps you were debating whether to invest your $600 in the Dig tapes. And here I am telling you not to buy the stuff.

Except I’m not telling you anything of the sort. Because here was my response to everyone who contacted me asking whether to buy or not:

1. Apparently a big part of this is a recruiting play for the Dig agency and the people associated with Dig. So if you are looking for a full-time gig, it might be worthwhile just for that opportunity, even if you don’t get those “nebulous community benefits” — whatever they will turn out to be.

2. There are worthwhile ideas and insights in the course, but it’s as much what you bring to it as what’s in the actual content. If you are smart and ambitious, you can probably get a lot of value out of this training. But then again, if you are smart and ambitious, you can probably get a lot of value out of most anything.

So I am not endorsing the Dig tapes. And I am not issuing a fatwa against it either. You will have to make up your own mind. If you are curious, here’s where you can get the full details:

https://dig-lolz.myshopify.com/

And if you decide not to buy the Dig tapes, or even if you do, you might want to read my email tomorrow.

​​I will tell you the most valuable thing I have personally gotten from this Dig.This.Zoom course so far. All for free. If you want to read that, you can sign up for my email newsletter here.

It was all my fault, and always has been

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A few nights ago, I was lying in my plush bed, smoking a cigar and tossing grapes into my mouth one by one.

Life was good.

I had just sent out my email about the prestigious Dig.This.Zoom event. It was only a matter of time now.

A bit of movement in the corner of my bedroom caught my eye. It was my laptop, open to my Gmail inbox. A new email had arrived. I could just make out the subject line:

“Your form, ‘John Bejakovic consult request’, has a new response”

“Sooner than I expected,” I smirked, “but I’m not surprised.”

In that email about the Dig.This.Zoom event, I had successfully associated myself with heavyweight marketers Aaron Winter and Dan Ferrari. I ended that email with my consulting offer.

Clearly, I thought, some smart business owner, who owns a profitable niche business I would never have even dreamed about, and who reads my daily newsletter religiously, realized he could make much more money with my advice and guidance.

That business owner is now reaching out to offer to pay me in advance… if only he can get a bit of time on my calendar, and the opportunity to have my highly trained eyes locked critically on his email funnels, until I find small changes that can lead to big improvements.

I slid out of bed lazily and made my way to my laptop.

I imagined myself a few months down the line, getting an email from said business owner. The email would say:

“John I was skeptical when we first did the consult. But we made the changes you suggested. And now we’re making 11x what we were before from the same email funnel. I’m over the moon! I’m sure you don’t need yet another glowing testimonial. But if you ever want to use this publicly to let the world know how incredible you are, please go ahead. It would be an honor for me.”

“Well okay, if it would be an honor for you,” I said to my empty bedroom as I clicked the Google Forms link. “Let’s see who the lucky business owner is today. I wonder what mysterious and surprising line of work he is in.”

My ugly Google form opened up. My mouth hung open. My face sank.

There it was. My newest consulting request. The successful business owner from that surprising new niche I had been fantasizing about. The request read, in its entirety,

“I am a Nigerian direct response copywriter. I want to learn from you.”

I wasn’t sure what bothered me more. The fact that my fantasy had been popped, and that this was the polar opposite of the ideal consulting lead I was dreaming about. Or perhaps it was just the utter lack of effort involved in this “consulting request.”

“Learn from me? Learn what? How to write self-deprecating emails like this one? How to make ugly Google Forms? How to approach people in a way that shows you are serious about working with them and respectful of their time?”

I wasn’t sure how I could possibly respond to this request in a sensible way that didn’t waste more of my time. And then I realized I should just do it in a daily email to my list.

I also remembered a bit of philosophy I’ve long held near to my heart:

It’s always your fault.

That might not sound like the healthiest way to go through life. But it’s served me well.

If things ever go in the completely wrong direction, away from where I want to be, then like David Byrne, I always ask myself, “Well, how did I get here?”

Because pianos don’t just fall out of the sky and land on your head. You have to walk under them first, as they are hanging by a fraying rope. You have to stand around, spinning aimlessly from side to side, while that rope gets more and more frayed. And you have to make sure you never look up until finally the rope snaps.

So dear Nigerian direct response copywriter, if you are reading, don’t feel like I am picking on you.

It was my fault for not being sufficiently clear who my consulting offer was for, and what it was about.

If you’d like to learn from me — I assume how to write copy, but who knows — then my suggestion would be to wait another week.

That’s when I will reopen my Copy Riddles program.

​​Copy Riddles is a way to learn copywriting from me, in a very compact and affordable package. Much more affordable than the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars it would take if you want to get the equivalent knowledge from me in a series of one-on-one consults.

But perhaps you are not that Nigerian direct response copywriter looking to learn from me.

And perhaps now you have a clearer idea of my consulting offer is about. And perhaps you even think it might be smart for you, and for your business.

​​If so, fill out the ugly Google Forms form below. No need to go overboard. But give me more detail about you and your business than just saying, “I want to learn from you.”

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Nigerians get in for free, others like me have to pay $1,200

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Today I was planning to write an email about marketer Travis Sago, and how he says that, if you have the right offer and you put it in front of the right people, you can sell for 4-figures+ just by sending a description of the offer in an ugly Word document.

And no, this is not a pitch for Ian Stanley’s hot new “Word Doc Millions” course.

Instead, the key is that bit about having the right offer (pretty important)… and the right people (hugely important).

So that was the email I wanted to write today. I thought I could illustrate it by talking about the presentation I gave last night, and the little offer I made and successfully sold at the end, without even an ugly Word doc.

But then this morning, something happened and foiled my plans completely.

I woke up. Opened up my email. And within about 6 minutes, I had PayPaled $1,200 into the unknown, for an offer I had never heard of before, and which honestly worried me a little.

There wasn’t an ugly Word doc to sell this offer either.

Instead, there was an ugly sales page, though there wasn’t really any selling done on it, not even a headline. Just a bunch of photos of random people… reverse type… and what seems to be an intentionally slapdash description of what you might get.

What’s worse, a part of the offer is that, since “Nigeria is the next hot bed of talent” for the direct response industry, Nigerians get this offer for free while everyone else has to pay.

“Is this for real?” I asked myself. “Or is this some kind of prank?” It actually made me a little anxious about the money I was sending out.

And yet I did it. It seems to be okay. I got a confirmation email, from David Deutsch no less.

So let me get back to Travis Sago and tell you about this offer:

It’s just a bunch of Zoom calls, put on by copywriter Aaron Winter.

Never heard of Aaron?

Neither had I, until a few years ago, when I joined Dan Ferrari’s coaching group.

Dan, as you might know, was the star copywriter at The Motley Fool. Then he left and started writing a bunch of controls for other financial clients, including Agora Financial.

I wrote about Dan in Commandment IV of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters book. That commandment was based on an insight Dan extracted from the first sales letter he wrote in the health space (as far as I know), which tripled response over the control and sold out the entire supply of Green Valley’s telomere’s supplement.

So Dan is really what you might consider an A-list copywriter.

And Aaron Winter was Dan’s copy chief at The Motley Fool… and Dan’s partner (and still copy chief) at Dig.In, the marketing agency they started after they left to work for themselves.

Dan’s coaching group was the moment in my copywriting career where I went from scraping by to making good money as a copywriter. I learned a lot and continue to learn a lot from Dan. And Dan learned a lot and continues to learn a lot from Aaron.

But Aaron never had a blog, newsletter, or book. He never offered any kind of public training.

Until now.

Are you getting an idea of how this works?

The right offer… in front of the right people… and 6 minutes later, a $1,200 sale.

Well, unless you’re Nigerian. Then you get in for free.

At this point, you might expect me to link to the ugly sales page for this Aaron Winter offer. But if you really are the right prospect for this, you will have to jump through a few hoops. As a first step, I’d suggest getting on the email lists of some of the Dig.In people, such as Dan Ferrari or Ning Li.

As for me, I have to put an offer in front of you to wrap up this email.

No ugly Word doc here either. But there is an ugly Google Forms page, my consulting intake form.

If you want my advice and guidance in putting together the right offer and getting it in front of the right people, you can get started below.

Albanians get in for free. Everyone else has to pay. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting